Another New Bear Funk Rekkid That's Rather Pleasant And Other Thoughts Of That Ilk!

It hasn’t been that long since I wrote about the last Bear Funk release by Italian producer Arturo Capone (and Capone has an album coming at the beginning of December). This time around the pressure comes from British musician Alex Cordiner aka Lusty Zanzibar. I imagine when his EP, For My Friends, (4 tracks on the wax, 6 tracks digital) drops on December 1st it should create quite a stir with the djs and dancers who have been getting kicks out of the stuff that the likes of Aeroplane have been putting out recently.

Once again this music is being thrust into ready made genres like Nu disco and Balearic (yeah Chris Rea and Mister Mister would sound dope next to “Pacific Air Race”) but the truth is that it is just great, well produced dance music, which happens to be melodic and nicely arranged. Melody is for airheads as minimal techno’s dearth of music and abundance of whooshy noises has sagely proven. Why bounce around to a tricky bass line with lush strings when you can stroke your chin to a two note bass line and no strings? And don't get me wrong there's a fair bit of minimal that I like, Konrad Black is the man, Heartthrob has done some nasty tracks, Dan Bell rules from on high, Kompakt can do no wrong and Will Saul is on point. It's just that there is a lot of it that's plain boring. Sorry.

I think you can almost map the direction that electronic dance music is taking: the melody of Italo, disco and Cosmic gear is being deftly absorbed into modern productions by artists like Reverso 68, Phreek Plus One and Aeroplane, and that is all set to crash into a just bubbling fixation with a diverse amount of late ‘80s and early ‘90s gear, ranging from Weatherall remixes and Balearic bombs from the likes of Sheer Taft and BBG to the NY garage nuggets which are being given the twice over.

Lusty Zanzibar’s killer EP from Steve Kotey’s Bear Funk label is another step in the right direction. It’s driving, yet extremely musical and uplifting. No pianos. but I’m sure those are just around the corner, when someone in NY gives the Baldelli chinstroking a miss for a second, puts down that Steel Mind record and picks up an FPI Project 12 inch it’ll be on like Donkey Kong. Now a prayer,

Dear Father who carts in obscene
amounts of obscure rekkids, hallowed
be thy slightly worn copy of LB Bad’s EP
on Nu Groove. Will thou send us a party
thrown by people who aren’t proprietary
and who aren’t generic with their music, and
give us rekkids with melodic synthy bits,
strings and girls singing about life affirming
stuff. You can also ditch the banging electro,
irony and no name djs from LA who can’t mix
but are real handy with traktor. You can send
some that can mix and that might be handy with
a tractor (like a John Deere peut être ).
Amen!

Nice one Steve Kotey. Keep em coming, and keep on keepin’ on and on (Fears Keep On).

Orr